spiritual self-obliteration quest part 2

[serpentinemalign]

i read how to keep house while drowning this week, while procrastinating on the dishes again. it was very good. a lot of it was about the sheer constancy and pressure of most self-help and self-care advice. it felt quite like lifting a weight off my chest. i feel like there is a subcategory of self-help that is actually good because it is built on the principles of liberation psychology and anticapitalism. i always recommend laziness does not exist by devon price as a good example of this. maybe i am due a reread. i have been doing fuck all but the bare minimum but i am existing and my hope is that that's enough.

fun stuff:

i am playing a LOT of slay the spire, which is really replaying because i already got pretty far into ascension on the switch. but now im playing on my phone which feels infinitely easier and lower friction. it feels like something i can just chip away at. hundreds of hours into this game, many cards are finally clicking for me that i just never selected at the start because they felt too low impact. right now i am really appreciating the need for card draw, far higher than energy and raw damage or defence. probably later into ascension i will have a different revelation. i have purposely locked myself away from strategy guides for this game (other than checking technicalities of certain cards) because i want the pleasure of figuring it out myself, even though i would say that games requiring any kind of strategy are... often ones i struggle with the most, because i'm naturally impatient and impulsive. i also finally got the true ending, without ascension, with an extremely cheesy body slam/barricade deck.

i'm also playing a lot of riichi mahjong, which i think i mentioned in a previous journal. i'm getting a lot better! it's super fun. i will probably get my ass kicked more as i go up the ranks. i feel like these two games complement each other quite well as my forever-games for now. there is just enough strategy, opportunism, and randomness to keep me infinitely interested in them.

we're watching the latest simpsons season right now. simpsons is good again? it's pretty wild. a lot of these episodes have the vibe of sort of like... season 9, just transferred to our cursed modern age. it's not 'classic simpsons', but it does have a much clearer sense that the writers are nerds and do care about the characters they're writing about for more than just brand recognition and keeping the shambling corpse alive. having grown up with the show (it was one of my first hyperfixations like. ever.), it feels VERY weird that i am now closer to homer and marge's ages than lisa and bart's, though. and that homer and marge are now millennials.

unfun stuff:

this weekend i had an episode and walked for miles around my neighbourhood to stave off the death wish. thought about just getting a hotel room and going off the grid for a while. fortunately, i did not do this. i dont think i have self harmed in... quite a while. i want to be grateful about that.

i feel like most of my life is fluctuating between ego and void underneath. i kind of hoped that by this point of healing i would maybe feel a healthy sense of self. it more feels like, the episodes are much less severe but the underlying issues are the same. i go to sleep. i run away from problems but i dont often make them much worse. i still do not know who i am until people tell me. people keep telling me to be happy with what i have, that i have already won or succeeded or whatever. but the void is still gaping.

idk, maybe i should go back to my previous therapist once xmas is over and i have some spare cash. like, the next nhs therapy which will be next year, at best, is gonna be ocd therapy woooo and i want to be in as good a place to tackle that as i can be. it feels like basically i have to do the piecing together the trauma and narrative myself, and self-fund that, because it seems that nhs therapy is not really built for years of complex trauma.

i have the chance to make... maybe a genuine impact? maybe just reach out to people who also feel me? cause theres this creative group i work with sometimes, and they are starting a neurodivergence network. basically i just want to show up and share ALL of my misgivings about how the organisation is currently set up and maybe find other people who feel the same way. but i dont know if they are going to welcome a bitchfest from me. but man this has been stewing ever since i joined. i feel like, if i am not going to be a happy picture of Success Despite, then i need to make some fucking noise to be seen. but i suppose this is my problem.

Comments

[tropicsbear]

So glad you were able to stave off on the urges. Offering all the virtual hugs if you want them.

Thank you, too, for the book recs! I think I'll check out Laziness Does Not Exist.

[serpentinemalign]

thank you so much <3 <3 <3

it's a great book! it was super eye opening but has probably taken a few years to actually embed its message. the author's blog is also a great read.